


Re-

by aderyn



Series: Deep Map [13]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Post Reichenbach, Pre Reichenbach, Re-Warming, Reunion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:58:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cold heart is a misnomer.  John ought to know. He’s held one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Re-

**Author's Note:**

> this is for [Professorfangirl](http://archiveofourown.org/users/lizeckhart/pseuds/professorfangirl), with thanks and love.

_"But those who understand cold know that even as it deadens, it offers perverse salvation."--Peter Stark_

"Not gay," John says to Irene.  
  
That's nothing new. She's across the table from him, neckline steep and glittering, fingering an absent cigarette.  
  
"But you've been with a man," she says.  
  
"See," says John,"That's the 'don't ask' part."  
  
"I wasn't asking." An invisible light flares in her hand.  
  
She wasn't asking, of course, and isn't that all too familiar.  
  
Irene taps her own cheekbone with a fingertip. A buttress of ice.  
  
"I know you think I'm like him," she says, "You'll reject that idea eventually, but you have to try all the familiar pathways first— _the eyes, the hair, sharp mind, possibly sociopathic or no, just damaged, impossibly bright and needs never met and never touched in the proper ways, the warm and human ways, and isn't that a bit sad._ You'll go off the rails eventually, Dr. Watson; you always do. But you're a good soldier, a good doctor; you won't go off without a good chart."  
  
John doesn't blink, but it's a near thing.  
  
"Finished?" he says.  
  
"Never," says Irene, "and neither have you."  
  
 *******  
He dreams, or he remembers.  It's a cold night, acid sleet again, and they're waiting in the lee of a Wren church (which one) for something criminal to happen. It's been quite a while. When a streetlamp unshadows Sherlock’s face, John sees that his lips have gone blue.   
  
"Oh, for Christ's sake," John says. "This is over."  
  
"Don't be ridiculous,” says Sherlock. He doesn't seem to notice his fingernails, his teeth.  He doesn't say anything when John strips off a glove, touches fingers to his face.  
  
"You're bloody freezing," John says, "We're going home."  
  
He doesn't say anything when John tugs the scarf from where it dangles loose and damp at his neck and wraps it round his head, tucking the ends into the turned- up collar of the coat.  
  
"Better?"  
  
"Marginally."  
  
A drop of water sluices off his nose and runs down John's wrist, follows the track of a radial vein.  
  
 *******  
"Here," says John. He's holding a mug of something hot, likely tea, strong, with a lot of demerara sugar.  
  
Sherlock has had a shower and John has him on the sofa with blankets and microwaved towels in plastic bags.  
  
Smoke and black tar, weather-clock and rain gauge, a dream, optics, a god's-eye view; he's outside his body looking down at John there, mug in hand, weapon still in waistband, forearms exposed.  
  
"How did I," Sherlock says, “reconstitute myself?"  Drops of water (fresh from the old pipes, coppered, leaded) cling to his lashes in way that, were he a child, might be... well, were he.

Heartbreaking.

"Before this, you mean," John says, and goes to turn up the heat.

*******

Cold heart is a misnomer. John ought to know. He’s held one.

Cold heart is a metaphor of course; warm heart too but Sherlock hasn’t deleted them; they’re useful.

Which conversation ought they to have.  
  
 *******

The bill's on the table. There's a single eyelash on the saucer across from him, a lick of sugar, the memory of Sumatra and imagined smoke.  John never knows which world he's in anymore, which conversations he’s had and which he hasn’t.  
  
He always seems to be blinking and awake, again awake, a taper flicked on, all fingertips and bedsheets and raindrops and lashes and god.

*******

There isn’t a prayer in the world that could ride these spires, these steeples, through the ether to the ear of the deity that might, well…there isn’t a single word, a single bit of faith or science that might speed the dismantling, the tearing, the crouching, the killing, that could turn winter, turn wind, bring him home before it’s time.  St. James’s, he thinks, St. Bride’s, St. Mary- le-Bow, St. Clement Danes, St. Magnus-the-Martyr.  

St. Mary-le-Bow.  John.

*******

There’s a declivity.  A white field and a bed.

“I know,” she says in his ear, “what you miss.”

Irene’s hood, thrown back, sifts a shower of the lightest snow.

( _Steeple your fingers. Put your hand to crook of your elbow. Steeple your fingers three times; close your eyes, click your heels, and go.)_

*******

“It’s cold,” Sherlock says, “it’s cold.”

The years will shake you, the knowledge of what you’ve done, crystals in tissue, blood returning from extremity.  Here, a trauma, a re-warming, a curtain to keep out the draft, a cover.

“You aren’t gone,” John says, “you weren’t…”  

(You’re not done.)

You’re an old case dredged up with the …no, stop.

A church, squareish and soaring, plain lines, the choir gone, sleet, a wait. Teeth clenched to the bitter dentine.

I’ve been with, John thinks, I’ve been with…

It’s hard to think.

I’ve been _without._

I haven’t been with anyone but you.

*******

Snow fog—SH

Dendritic crystals--SH

Dinner?--SH

Too late.—SH

I suppose--SH

He’s not sure he’ll get an answer, not sure he’ll a get anything at all but chafed, brushed up or brushed off; oh, all the connections missed and the chill, the chill…the salt chill that brought tears to his eyes that he didn’t know what to do with, the fingernails, the sad half-moons of his hands, of his life. It was so long.  So long to be gone and not done.  

*******

Not too late, John says. To himself. He’s not anything, really, but what he is. It’s the dead of winter and there’s the holly’s eye, the brown bird with the crooked tail, the leaves on the wrought iron, the lights pale and occasional.  You know, it’s not too late. It’ll never be too late again. He’d put Sherlock’s hands under his coat. Walk all the way home from the station, and Sherlock would do the same for him. Oh these conversations. (Lestrade: It’s bloody freezing out here; where‘s the genius when you need him? _He’s here; he’s not gone; he never was_.  Irene: You’re not finished, not finished. ) He’d walk now, all the way back from the station, Sherlock’s hands under his coat, looking up at the spires. They might do that sometime. They might do it still, yet, again, for the first time. They could do that. It wouldn’t be strange.

**Author's Note:**

> [Wren churches in London](http://www.timeout.com/london/around-town/event/56463/discovering-wren-churches)  
> [Sir Christopher Wren](http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/wren_christopher.shtml)  
> [St. George’s in Yarmouth, based on Wren’s St. Clement Danes](https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-1xok0kCaZrU/UJ_4yM2Cy5I/AAAAAAAAqYY/4Ah0zraut9k/s512/100_7292.JPG)  
>  church-inspiration and beautiful St. George's photo above from [Quarryquest](http://quarryquest.livejournal.com).  
> [Sir Christopher Wren’s weather clock](http://books.google.com/books?id=NCLuXvt91QsC&pg=PA85&lpg=PA85&dq=Wren%27s+weather+clock&source=bl&ots=SvN9qP_PO5&sig=tKTt3h7d7doDlylgIdKvJ1KGPPc&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ve2_ULf3JfGL0QG2roDABw&ved=0CEMQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=Wren%27s%20weather%20clock&f=false)  
> [ Snow fog](http://www.deansdomain.me.uk/)  
> [Ice fog](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IkwzFV6O6lk/TVt-mQbmLJI/AAAAAAAAAEY/D2DpQp3AGZo/s1600/ice+fog.jpg)  
>   
> [impulsereader's lovely cold fic, "Occluded Front"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/582243)
> 
>  
> 
> [the beautiful chill of Moranion's "A Strange Morning"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/567933)
> 
>  
> 
> [Elvis Costello, “Cold, Cold Heart”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lc1yHZc8Tfg)
> 
>  
> 
>    
> "Nature repeats herself, or almost does:  
> repeat, repeat, repeat; revise, revise, revise."—Elizabeth Bishop, “North Haven”


End file.
